Cambridge-Cranfield HPCF: Introductory User Guide

Help and Advice

The CCHPCF webpages http://www.hpcf.cam.ac.uk/ contain the latest version of this document as well as pointers to more detailed information.

If you have a problem with the CCHPCF machines the first person to ask is probably another user in your department / research group.

Failing this, please direct any questions to the system managers, email: .

The operation of the CCHPCF is managed by the Management Committee. Each department has a representative and users are encouraged to pass on comments and suggestions. Contact details for department reps can be found on the CCHPCF webpages.

Logging in

The names of the machines are

franklin.hpcf.cam.ac.uk - SunFire 15K supercomputer
maxwell.hpcf.cam.ac.uk - Sun Opteron cluster
hartree.hpcf.cam.ac.uk - IBM SP supercomputer

Users can log into a machine using ssh. Eg

[my_workstation] ssh  spqr1@franklin.hpcf.cam.ac.uk
spqr1@franklin.hpcf.cam.ac.uk's password:
Last login: Sat Feb 22 17:24:29 2003 from virgo.cus.cam.a
franklin-1 [1]

Shells

The standard shells are available (sh, csh, tcsh, ksh, bash). The command chsh can be used to change your default shell.

franklin-1[1] chsh
The supported shells are sh, csh, bash, ksh and tcsh; please type the
name of the one you want as your login shell:

File Space

Your home directory is visible on all machines. It physically exists on a fileserver called perutz. There are large temporary (scratch) filespaces attached to the machines, symbolic links in your home directory point to these (franklin-tmp, hartree-tmp). Access to franklin-tmp from franklin is much faster than accessing your own home directory from franklin. Thus jobs on franklin requiring significant file I/O should first copy the files they need to franklin-tmp and then run there. The same applies to the other machines.

The temporary filespace is not backed up. Files which have not been accessed for two months are automatically deleted. Users should remember periodically to delete large unwanted files and copy important files to their homespace or local workstation.

File Transfer

The recommended means of transferring files into and out of the CCHPCF is scp. Eg.

my_workstation[1] scp file.dat spqr1@franklin.hpcf.cam.ac.uk:
Warning: Permanently added 'franklin.hpcf.cam.ac.uk' 
(DSA) to the list of known hosts.
sprq1@franklin.hpcf.cam.ac.uk's password:
file.dat    100\% |****************************| 15452       00:00
my_workstation[2]

Editors

There are two editors available on the machines: emacs and vi.

Back to Pt1 (Intro)